


The Lester Letters

by Rockin_Robyn



Series: In The Crossroads of Our Love [18]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Fluff, Multi, Polyamory, lgb Characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-15 19:06:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18505207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rockin_Robyn/pseuds/Rockin_Robyn
Summary: A collection of the Lester children writing about their unconventional family.





	1. My Parents Love Me

My Parents Love Me   
Esperanza Santiago 

People often look at my family and immediately assume that we don’t belong together. My mamā is a small Mexican-Puerto Rican woman with tattoos anyone can see on a hot day, who wears an angry expression and even angrier shirts. My Daddy is a tall, skinny, pasty British guy with one almost invisible tattoo, a pleasant smile on his face, and clothes that make you think he has his life together. My Papí is tall and white too, but he’s really muscular when you actually look at him. He looks like the professor everyone has a crush on because he is. 

I look like a sepia tone Jackson Pollock painting, or a child splashed with a fine layer of mud. Mamā says I look like a constellation, like her little Estrella. My oldest sister looks okay until you realize that she’s a black girl in a family full of white boys and latinas. Our little sister fits in the most until she gets dressed. Her mental state is made obvious by her clothing. Everyone thinks my little brother is a girl until he opens his mouth. Then they think he’s a rude girl. 

My mother had me while she still lived in America with my birth father. He was in prison until I was twelve. Until I was thirteen, I lived with my abuelita in America. Then she died and her husband shipped me off to England. My abuelo has never liked me that much. Probably because I reminded him of Mamā. 

When I moved in with Mamā, it was really awkward. I was in a different country where I barely knew anyone. I knew Daddy and Papí, but only as Mikey and Jamie. I went from not having any parents or siblings to having three parents and two sisters. 

Don’t get me wrong, they were always in my life. I knew them really well actually. I knew that Mamā always sang in Spanish because she was scared she’d forget how to. I knew that Jamie didn’t like his mom all that much and that Mikey loved his moms a lot. I knew that Daisy never met her real parents and that Pip didn’t know who her dad was. I knew that the twins weren’t really twins. We were an odd bunch. I knew that. 

One thing you should know going into this story, I love painting, always have. When I moved to England, I was super shy, always scared to speak up. Once, Mamā saw me playing with a paint brush and asked me what I was doing. I told her that I wanted to make rose like her tattoos. She laid down on the floor, tied her shirt above her stomach, and told me to trace them. 

Slowly, Daddy, Papí, and the twins came in to watch. The next time, they joined in. Daisy did a crudely done turtle on Daddy’s back, Daddy made a koi on Papí’s leg, he did a heart on Mamā’s foot. Pip colored some of my freckles with the colors of the rainbow because I had just come out. 

When people first hear about my parents’ relationship, they think it’s some weird sex thing. They think three people couldn’t possibly raise children as well as ‘normal’ people. Mamā says that she raised four kids, two of which aren’t even hers, a whole lot better than her ‘normal’ parents raised her and her sisters. All I know is that my Daddy and Papí love me a lot more than mi padre or abuelo ever did.

So when people ask me about my parents’ ‘odd’ relationship, I just tell them that at least my parents love me.


	2. Yes, I Was Born Here

Yes I was Born Here  
Ainsling Lester

My birth mother was half African-half English and my birth father was African-Irish. So yes, I am black. With an Irish name. I was raised by two Englishmen and a Latina. I speak two languages. I celebrate Día de los Muertos, I make Colcannan, I wear a Yoruba on my birth mother’s birthday, I ride the London eye on my birthday.

So when I see people screaming at riots, or squinting at my tattoo, or giving my family weird looks at restaurants, I wish I had a megaphone so I could shout at them; “Yes I Was Born Here And Yes This Is My Family!”

My family is a melting pot. Our family photos look like a brochure for a college that brags about diversity. My Daddy and Papí are English, my Mamā is Puerto Rican-Mexican, my sister Espe is Puerto Rican, Mexican, and black. My sister Pip calls herself ‘Puertomexicish’ and my brother is Russian. 

Unlike Espe and Mika, I have lived with my adoptive mom since I can remember. I never actually met my real mom. Her name was Elizabeth Adaku Jalloh. It means ‘Gods gift of wealth’. She named me Ainsling Daisy Ahunna Mulligan. Ahunna means ‘body of her father’. She did not know my father enough to love him. 

Ever since I was six, when I asked my parents why I did not look like them, Mamā and I have spent her birthday talking about her, looking at pictures, and watching videos. 

When I was six, Akira Zhang asked me why I did not look like Papí. I told him that Mamā did not look like Papí and he said that I did not look like Mamā either. Daddy picked me up from school that day. I asked him why I was not white like him and Papí or brown like Mamā. He told me to ask her because it was not his story to tell. 

So I asked Mamā. She dropped the cup she was holding and it broke. As she cleaned it up, she asked me where I had gotten the idea to ask her that. I told her about Akira. She told me that he might have been right, but he was not entitled to tell me that or ask about my family history. 

But if I really wanted to know why I did not look like her, she would tell me as soon as she had cleaned up all the glass. She picked me up and sat down on the couch with me on her lap and told me about two kids she met in the international dorms.

The way she told it at first, it was love at first sight. In reality, they got drunk and fucked in the bathroom. Not really the kind of thing you want to tell a kid. The boy, Thomas, was a soldier. He was shot down on a special mission no one was allowed to talk about. The girl was pregnant. She gave the baby a name from both of their cultures. Then she was killed by a disease she couldn’t even pronounce.

It wasn’t until later that I realized that this was the fairytale she used to tell me every night before Pip and I started sharing a room. I was scrolling through Mamā’s old videos at three in the morning and I found titled ‘Shh, It’s Bedtime’. 

In the video, daddy was standing in a doorway and smiling. He put his finger to his lips, mimicking shushing. The way he was holding the camera, you can tell he is trying to hide it. At first, all you can hear is silence, then Mamā’s voice. 

“Hola Señora Day. ¿Quieres escuchar una historia?”

You can hear me saying something in the background saying something, but it is really muffled. 

She tells me the story of a princess with a strange and beautiful voice. She was not in a tower, or an endless sleep, or under a horrible curse, like most princesses. She was at a party for people from many different places. She went because she was just like them. She met a handsome knight from a not-so-far kingdom. They fell in love and had a beautiful daughter named Day. The knight died defending his kingdom. Then, when the girl was still little, the princess was killed by an evil dragon. The baby went to live with the princess’s lady-in-waiting and her two stable boy husbands. 

I do not know if my mother and father loved me. But I do know that my Mamā, Papí, and Daddy love me. No matter what anyone else says.


End file.
